Monday, March 1, 2010

On Friday, February 26, 2010 I was invited by a client to a luncheon at the Palmer House in Chicago. The theme of the event, 2010 Go Red For Women, was about raising awareness and money to battle heart disease through funding research on how to rid ourselves of this killer at almost any age. Whether congenital or not, this disease hits women at a higher ratio than men. Seven Lifestyle Simple suggestions listed on the table setting individual place card menus include: 1) Get Active; 2) Eat Better; 3) Lose Weight; 4) Stop Smoking; 5) Control Cholesterol; 6) Manage Blood Pressure; 7) Reduce Blood Sugar. The Recipe Collection compiled by Merck, noted themselves on the back page as working 'hard to discover and develop innovative medicines and vaccines not just for the sake of the company and our shareholders, but also-and most importantly- for patients!' Nice of them to include the reason they exist, the patients! But nothing was said about the primary source of the disease for most women (and people): the Western diet!

This is what we should be funding: new recipes that do not cause or worsen heart disease. Let’s unravel disease to find the real cause.

Take a look at the primary killers of Americans: heart disease, cancer and diabetes. ALL of these diseases are primarily rooted in the American Western diet. And yet as I sat there thinking about all the conversation on the need to raise funds to find CURES for heart disease. I kept returning to one thought, a thought that was not unknown to me, a thought that is the core of why Vegetable Alchemy is so important as the new architecture of food: since the most common causes of disease are for the most part caused by the Western diet and lack of fitness, WHY are we funding cures through medicine? Why are we not FUNDING cures through developing new recipes that will change the Western diet, that can be applied to manufacturing and today's demand for lifestyle-centric frozen, shelf stable and fast food? According to Body and Soul, a Martha Stewart publication, February, 2010, “95 percent of U.S. health-care funds go towards treating illness. 5 percent goes to prevention.” THIS is a call for CHANGE!

Why are we funding research to battle the disease when we SHOULD BE funding the research to MAKE food for our bodies, for our cells that are more nutritious and more heathful. This is the food of longevity and positive proactive living. The best defense is a strong offense.

Lee Iacocca in his book, Where Have All the Leaders Gone?, talks about politics, but I want to use that context and say....with the EARTH at a Crossroads (Hartmut Bossel), is it not time to fund new thoughts on the human diet so that these diseases caused by foods that conflict with human anatomy are updated for cell nutrition and not bioengineered for profit? Almost all food we eat is based on a system steeped in industrial farming, manufacturing ease, marketing tags, 100 year old generationally suggestive recipes rooted in old cuisine. It is time to take notice from the countless books that have appeared in the last four decades--such as Paul Roberts, End of Food and Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food--and bring research to the forefront that is based on what the human cell needsand NOT on age old adapted templates now used in manufacturing that cause these diseases.

In February, an international kitchen design company demonstrated at a conference in Europe their idea of the 'kitchen of the future.' While the ideas are smart, what I wanted to hear and see were ideas based on recipes for human 'cell cuisine' of the future, one that eliminates disease from the process of growing to manufacturing. That is not what I saw, although I love the stove top.

What I want is a statement that we need to design for the cell. That is why it appears is MY statement: Design recipes NOT on historic styles but on a new "Cell Cuisine." Then design the equipment around it. All for this, say 'AYE!' All opposed....please 'wake up as you will soon be part of the reaction instead of the revolution!'